Hi
The working draft of the CSS3 Text Module
<http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/style/specs/css3-text/scratchpad> says:
"tibetan
Justification primarily stretches spaces after shad if the line
contains any and/or pads the end of the line with tsek marks if the line
already ends in one."
1. "spaces after shad" needs to include spaces following the letters KA
U+0F40 and GA U+0F42 (with or without combining vowels) since the shad
is not written after these two characters (due to the long descenders on
the right side of their glyphs).
2. Traditionally manuscript and xylograph printed Tibetan texts were
"justified" by padding lines with multiple tsek (U+0F0B) marks. This was
necessary as calculating the amount of extra space needed for padding
lines was impractical when writing text by hand or carving woodblocks.
Today this practice is insisted on by one or two pedantic westerners who
have seen it in old texts and think therefore it should be maintained.
However in my experience native Tibetan and Bhutanese users invariably
prefer normally justified text when setting Tibetan on computers. Since
space characters are infrequent in Tibetan (and sometimes do not occur
even in a long line of text) this is best achieved by both stretching
spaces and by slightly increasing the width of the glyph for tsek
characters (which follow every syllable). [It should be noted that these
tsek characters (U+0F0B) also provide the primarily line break
opportunity in Tibetan and Dzongkha text.] Padding lines with extra tsek
characters is then totally unnecessary except where one is trying to
imitate the appearance of old manuscripts or woodblock prints.
regards
Chris
==
Christopher Fynn
Dzongkha Linux project
Department of Information Technology
Thimphu, Bhutan